Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/194

184 than would suffice for the people, through legal methods, to compel its modification. One explanation—i. e., of inconsistency—on the part of the people who pay taxes is, that although the benefits derived from the institution of government (which practically can not exist without taxation) are of the first importance, they are not so very obvious, nor so striking, as to be readily recognized and appreciated by the masses, who are accordingly apt to look with complacence upon a direct (personal) demand for a tax in the light of a compulsory payment, for which no equivalent is returned. Indeed, this feeling is so strong that it has become an almost popular maxim in all countries that "there is nothing which a person so hates to do as to pay taxes," in case they are direct. But by the ingenious plan of taxing articles on which incomes are expended, rather than openly demanding a portion of the income itself, the amount of taxation is concealed from the mass of taxpayers, and its payment is made to appear in some measure voluntary. The indirect tax being generally advanced rather than paid, as has been already shown, in the first instance by the importers, the ultimate purchasers for consumption confound the tax with the natural price of the commodity. No separate demand being made upon them for the tax, it escapes their consideration, and the article which they receive seems the fair equivalent of the sacrifice made in acquiring it. Indirect taxes have also the advantage of being paid by degrees, in small portions, and at a time when the commodities are wanted for consumption, or when it is most convenient for the consumer to pay them."

In the attempt, furthermore, of civilized rulers to maintain a civilized government over an uncivilized people, there seems to be no practical method of compelling such a people to help maintain a proper and desirable government except through a resort to indirect taxation. Thus, in British India, a country of low civilization, small accumulation of wealth, and under such climatic conditions as necessitate the minimum of clothing, shelter, and food, the only way by which the mass of the native population can be compelled to contribute anything whatever, apart from a tax on land in the form of rent, toward the support of a government whose beneficent and civilizing influence has become a matter of history, is by the taxation of salt, the consumption of which is a necessity to all, and the production and distribution of which can in a great measure be controlled.

In the British island and colony of Jamaica, populated mainly by emancipated blacks and their descendants (557,132 out of a total of 580,804 in 1881), who own little or no land, and consume